Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers eBook

Rumor has it that there are seventy-two separate states
and dependencies represented on the Isthmus.
My own cards showed a few less. Most conspicuous
absences, besides American negroes, were natives of
Honduras, of four countries of South America, of most
of Africa, and of entire Australia. That this
was largely due to chance was shown by the fact that
my fellow-enumerators found persons from all these
countries.

Weeks afterward the population of Uncle Sam’s
ten by fifty-mile strip of tropics was found to have
been on February first, 1912, 62,810. No, anxious
reader, I am not giving away inside information; the
source of my remarks is the public prints. Of
these about 25,000 were British subjects (West Indian
negroes with very few exceptions). Of the entire
population 37,428 were employed by the U. S. government.
Of white Americans, of the Brahmin caste of the “gold”
roll, there were employed on the Zone but 5,228,